01.25.16

The Jewelry Line Every Design Lover Should Be Wearing Now

We get a ton of pitches from jewelry designers who draw inspiration from architecture — there was a time last year when we had to sigh every time we saw yet another collection based on simple structured geometries. Not that they were bad — just that we rarely felt they transcended a mere aesthetic exercise into the realm of the truly, truly chic. But AGMES, the brand new line by New York designer Morgan Solomon, is a pretty exciting exception: Not only does Solomon name-check the likes of Cini Boeri and Bertrand Goldberg when talking about her inspirations, but her pieces have such a strong, sculptural presence that you could picture passing them on to your children someday. (The fact that she’s managed to sneak a High Gloss teapot into her lookbook shoot doesn’t hurt, either.) Solomon spent her childhood sketching imaginary jewelry after taking a class at summer camp, but ended up going to business school and working as a fashion buyer before deciding to jump ship last year and return to her formative love. Check out the results below, and shop them all here.

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05.27.11

You can learn a lot about Dutch designer Bernadette Deddens by just looking at her. First there are the shoes, which — depending on the day and the whims of London’s weather — she very well may have made herself. One pair of sandals constructed from $25 worth of pale leather and black cording could be mistaken for Margielas, yet are no less awe-inspiring for the fact that Deddens actually nicked the look from Tommy Hilfiger. After all, who makes their own shoes, anyway? Then there’s her jewelry, which is almost always her design, unless it’s a collaboration with her husband Tetsuo Mukai, with whom she formed Study O Portable two years ago. The jewelry is their way of giving people a form of creative expression that can be carried outside the house and into the wider world, as Deddens so poignantly demonstrates — hence their otherwise peculiar studio name.

12.13.11

“Paris is so beautiful, but it’s also way too cold,” says jewelry maker Regina Dabdab of the city she’s called home for the past six years, referring to its disposition rather than its weather. Despite generations of fashion designers adopting Parisian women as muses — Yves Saint-Laurent had Loulou de La Faliase; Balenciaga loves a classic Françoise Hardy silhouette — for Dabdab, their no-nonsense élan is far too restrained, and too much in contrast with the raw and untamed ethos of her native Brazil. It’s the latter qualities, combined with a strong sense of geometry, Dabdab tries to imbue her work with. “I don’t design for the reserved Parisian woman,” she says. “I think of home.”

02.28.11

Heaven Tanudiredja didn’t have a chance to tidy up the day I visited his Antwerp studio in early February, leaving his desk a maelstrom of beads, tools, and findings, punctuated by the odd Marlboro package. “Cigarettes and Red Bull — this is the real me,” he joked, apologizing for the mess. But to the uninitiated visitor, of course, it was a fascinating sight, a glimpse at the primordial soup that would soon be transformed into Tanudiredja’s ever-more-elaborate fall jewelry collection, which he’ll show this week in Paris. Because everything is made by hand in the studio, his desk is actually a production hub; with his line Heaven now in its ninth season, and his elaborate bead-encrusted necklaces selling for $5,000 at the likes of Barneys New York, Tanudiredja and his three-person team are responsible for churning out upwards of 300 pieces every six months, each of which takes 48 hours of exacting beadwork to construct. Hence the stimulants — not to mention the thick-rimmed glasses he has to wear while working as a consequence of his failing eyesight.